Interview with Young Talents

Amalia Yunita Halim
PhD

Write shortly about your backgroundI got my B.Sc. in biology from Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), Indonesia. In 2009 I was awarded Australian Development Scholarship to continue my postgraduate study at Curtin University, Australia. My MPhil research topic was investigation of the novelty of nitrate injection to mitigate reservoir souring problem and its effects on pipeline corrosion. During 2012-2015 I was employed as a PhD student at the Center for Energy Recourses Engineering (CERE). My PhD topic was the application of microorganisms for enhanced oil recovery in the North Sea reservoir. The study covered both the core flooding experiments to mimic the reservoir conditions and also the microbial growth studies to understand the processes that may have contribute to improve the oil production. On May 2015, I joined the Danish Hydrocarbon Research and Technology Center (DHRTC) as a postdoc.

Present your projectMy tasks at DHRTC are: 1) Establishing a protocol to combine X-ray CT scanning and image analysis methods on core flooding experiments. The aim is to maximize the information such as local oil saturation, capillary end effects, and influence of heterogeneity in water and/or gas flooding experiments using low permeable Danish reservoir rocks, 2) Starting up core flooding laboratory facilities at the DHRTC.

What do you expect the major challenges in your area of study will be? As a scientist we are interested not only to extract more oil but also to understand the processes that take place inside the rock. This might result in longer time needed to reach a conclusion or to take a decision, while the industry works in a faster speed. In addition, the experiment takes a long time to finish (one core flooding can take up to 2-3 months) while there are many interesting EOR agents need to be tested. To conclude, ‘time’ is our major challenge.

How do you plan to contribute in solving these problems? Make a thorough planning of the experiments and do several things in parallel. In addition, it is also very important to collaborate and discuss things with other people, not only living in our own world. This is also what I think is the strength of DHRTC because we have people with different expertise within the center and in the partner institutions. Therefore it is very important to talk and to mingle, as sometime some good ideas can come from an informal conversation during lunches or coffee breaks.

What are your expectations for your future career? To see what we are doing in DHRTC can give some important inputs in decision making of what is being implemented in the field.

Researchers from AWF1

Danish Hydrocarbon Research and Technology Centre

The Danish Hydrocarbon Research and Technology Centre at DTU is tasked with researching and developing new technologies with a view to improving utilization of the North Sea reserves of oil and gas. The centre is located at DTU and affiliated with research groups at the University of Copenhagen, Aarhus University, Aalborg University, and the Geological Survey of Greenland and Denmark (GEUS).

The Danish Hydrocarbon Research and Technology Centre at DTU is backed by the DUC partners who will award the centre funding in the amount of DKK 1 billion over ten years.